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The Bag Lady asks “Why not promote new home sales by burning down old homes?” Why not, indeed. She gives a decent explanation of how misguided the Cash For Clunkers Program really is, and her suggestion, while sarcastic, is a great analogy to what the government is having us do with our cars.

Christian PF asks “Will Social Security be around when you retire?” A post that gets you thinking whether or not you really want to count on Social Security as part of your retirement plan. I agree with his conclusion, “Plan for your retirement like Social Security will not exist. If it is still around, then you will have a nice little bonus.”

Financial Fizzle offers a great list (if you haven’t noticed by now, I love the lists) of “55 Ways to Simplify Your Finances.” A very neat list, it contains a combination of things to do to save time, money, or both. As someone who looks for and posts on frugal ideas, this list contains some gems, many of which hadn’t occurred to me.

Kevin Mercadante of Out of Your Rut guest posted on five cent nickel “Can We Take Frugality Too Far?” He takes a good look at the darker side of frugality, how it can slip into being cheap (as when one tips only 5%) or downright theft (taking a purseful of sugar packs from a restaurant). There’s also a time/money tradeoff that any of us who try to save need to acknowledge. Spend enough time shopping for a bargain and you’ve possibly traded an hour of your life for a dollar or two in savings. Good observations raised here.

I’ve tried to share with my readers the best five blog posts I read the prior week, and I was going to quit here, but then Baker, guest posting at Get Rich Slowly wrote “The ‘Do-I-Have-Enough-For-This?’ Effect” which sparked my interest. A new spin on an old topic, Baker dives into the nature of spending, and concludes that for him, eliminating credit cards completely was a good path toward his goals.